Gaeta and the philosophy of slow food

The outdoor market, as well as the many bakeries, and the local meat markets all make food shopping a real surprise everyday. Some locals speak in their broken English and try their really best to communicate. The friendly nature of locals will make you discover slowly that you have new familiar friends and you might be surprised to find yourself entertaining a longer conversation about life, football or people with the market man, the owners of the small grocery store across the way or the couple running the bakery down the street under your home.

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 A slice of the celebrated
       'Tiella Gaetana'

Do not be surprised. It’s only part of the friendly nature of Southern Italians. Living here and experiencing a lifestyle whose rhythm and pace is much slower than in large cities of the world allows people to rediscover the simple pleasures of life like getting familiar and communicating with people around where we live and getting to know our neighbors who will treat us almost as relatives as the time goes by.

You might find yourself nicely caught in the Southern Italian daily morning ritual to walk across the street to purchase an English language paper, buy some fresh fruits and vegetables, bread, fresh oranges and milk before going back home for a delicious breakfast. Some other times you might just go out quickly some freshly baked bread at the bakery a block away, then return to your home and have a home-made cup of cappuccino.

It won’t take long before to discover and choose your nearest favorite coffee shop in town which, has the best cappuccino and ‘cornetto’ (an Italian word for croissant) that you can get with either different types of jam spread in it or the creamy hazelnut Nutella (my favorite). Italian cafes have sandwiches and many other types of delicious pastries and cakes for breakfast but the most common one is usually ‘cappuccino and cornetto’.

Or simply you might prefer going to the local coffee shop to order your tasty cappuccino or a powerful espresso coffee and read the newspaper for good half hour before even thinking of coming back home to get ready for the beach and a vigorous swim at your favorite beach. Italians, as a traditional rule, take coffee drinking seriously as proved by the hundreds of thousands of coffee bars scattered throughout the streets. A meeting, business or else, would be a very unusual one without caffe’, which for Italians is strictly the ‘espresso’. No major decisions are ever made without caffe’. Morning caffe’, pre-noon caffe’, after-meal caffe’ and three o’clock caffe’ are all more or less traditional among Italians. No matter where you live in the country, you’ll find that Italian coffee can be a pleasurable change. Whether you have the convenience of an Italian coffee bar in your neighborhood or prepare it yourself, the many variations it offers makes it the perfect year-round morning drink to get you up and running.

There are a number of nice habits which is easy to incorporate in your new Mediterranean lifestyle. You will enjoy your shopping time each morning for fresh fruit, vegetables, bread, garlic, wine, daily-produced buffalo mozzarella and fresh pasta. You would go to your favorite produce stand and select fruit and juice for next breakfast and vegetables for dinner. Everything is always so delicious because all of the ingredients are purchased in the same morning. Gaeta has many gardens and fields where locals grow fresh vegetables and fruit. Everything is so fresh that it last for weeks in your fridge. It's a great way of shopping for healthy, fresh food which can be purchased daily in small portions just enough for each day. In large urban cities around the world we shop weekly rather than daily with loads of frozen and microwavable stuff. These days, many consumers have simply no alternative other than shopping in supermarkets; that is certainly not the case here where people eat mostly fresh and organic homemade meals.

If you habitually shop in one supermarket chain for ready meals, you might occasionally wonder if you are missing out on variety, quality, freshness and least but not last, flavor. By shopping at local old style street markets and small fruit and vegs groceries shops you will then be certain that this is sadly true. Here there are local ‘salumerie’, a sort of traditional old-style groceries half way between gourmet-food-shop and family-runned delicatessen stores. Every block has usually more than one and every family here has its favorite shop. A remarkable example of variety is the large number of national, regional and local cheeses or pasta shapes that any the small salumeria might have in their fully stocked shelves not to mention the hundreds of canned tomatoes brands you might find. Many of these brands and cheeses are available only in Italy, and some are known only in this specific zone of production.